Pages

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Something Went Wrong.

After a BIG week at work, I was really looking forward to this weekend. We had been invited to dinner at our neighbours' house, and it was set to be a great night. I really enjoy their company (as does my SH) and their kids and ours play really well together. As dinner was to be at their house, I offered to bring a dessert. It was my intention that I would blog about this dessert afterwards. I was probably going to be really smug about it too, in that annoying way that people who do things really well can do. Yes, I admit that I am that person some times. Look at me. Look what I can do. Well there was none of that in my dessert! (well, there is a little bit of that, but in the other dessert I made for the kids. More on that in a minute).

Anyway, my chosen dessert for tonight is one that we all love. Tried and tested, but I haven't made it in ages. Lemon Meringue Pie. What could possibly go wrong with that? Well apparently, a lot! I chose a recipe from my favourite cook book as I know that it has fool proof recipes. Hmmmm... can you already get the sense that they should have tested their recipes with me before declaring them "fool proof"?

I went the whole hog with this recipe, made my own pastry casing for it and everything. Only trouble is that I was also making the kids' dessert at the same time. In addition to this, I chose this time to have a deep-and-meaningful with my SH. So not just doing two things at once, but three, and this was after a full week at work, with an extra shift this morning thrown in for luck. Needless to say, I probably should have been paying a little more attention to what I was cooking, and a little less attention to my SH. lol

So, long and the short of it, I missed a step while preparing the Lemon Meringue Pie. Just a little step, but with massive consequences. I forgot to blind bake the pastry case! Now, this is pretty critical. You make the pastry, you roll it out, you lay it in the pie dish and you bake it. There is no avoiding this step. Once you assemble the pie it actually only goes back in the oven for 5 minutes, so there is no way that the base would get cooked in that short amount of time. Well, I forgot. Plain and simple. I didn't actually realise that I had forgotten until the pie was finished and I was pulling it out of the oven. It looked gorgeous. Lovely browning on the meringue top. It smelled delicious. But something was off. I knew it. On closer inspection, I realised what I had done. I had a raw pastry casing under my pie. I was devastated! I called mum and told her what had happened, and we both decided there was nothing I could do to save the pie. The filling was perfect, I just couldn't do anything to rectify the base.

It was delicious, we just couldn't eat the pastry case.

Well luckily for me, my neighbours are very forgiving. When it came time for dessert, everyone received a serving of the lemon filling with the meringue topping and some icecream on the side. The pastry was a write-off, but the dessert was still deemed a success by them all. We talked a little about the TV show, My Kitchen Rules, and decided that I would have received a 4 as my score for it on presentation, but would have scored higher for taste. Ah well. I never said I was perfect, and this proves it.

Now, on to the other dessert I made tonight. The Lemon Meringue Pie was for the adults and I had intended to make a jelly dessert for the kids. When I came home from work yesterday I saw a bag from mum on the kitchen bench and it had a box of vanilla cupcake mix in it. This changed everything for me. I decided to make cupcakes for the kids and decorate them up. Turns out the box was only the icing packets, the cake mix had already been used, never mind. So this afternoon I looked up a recipe for cupcakes from a Facebook page I follow called "365 Tupperware Recipes in 365 Days". I had seen it in my news feed a couple of weeks ago and thought they were really cute. I am not going to post the recipe in my blog as you can find it by following the link. These Cookie Monster Cupcakes were really easy to make, and I have to say, a massive success! The kids were so excited, and I was thrilled with Nat's reaction when she first saw them. Taste test responses from everyone were really good too. You should definitely give these a go!

6 comments:

Thanks Marg. The pie tasted ok, but I couldn't believe I would make such a rookie mistake. On the other hand, the cupcakes definitely are awesome! The next ones we are going make are Elmo ones. I promised the neighbours' son that we would do them over the holidays.

About Me

There are many things I love to do, but nothing more so than whipping up something delicious for my family to eat. When I have the time I also like to paint, with decorative art being my "thing". I hope that people might find a common interest and join me over here!